I've just been told that we are opening a new remote office in Quebec, which will have 5 Employees.

I've never done something like this before and would appreciate any advice.

Management wants me to see if we can setup VOIP Phones with our current phonesystem (AVAYA). I setup a meeting with an AVAYA Rep and see what can be done realisticly.

Things are going to be done cheap, so they want me to spend a few days there once the building is secured to help wire the network. I'm not sure if that is a good idea. I'm quite capable of wiring Cat5 at home but this a commercial application.

Than there are things like... will they access our FileServer over the cloud, and thats boing to suck with bandwidth. Will probably need to setup a VPN tunnel from here to there.

Just some ideas I'm thinking. Like I said I've never had to do this before.

13 Replies

The first key will be line speeds, make sure you get quick enough lines both at your office and in Quebec

Next get yourself a decent vpn device/firewall. 1 for each site. Use this device to then create a permanent VPN tunnel between the 2 sites.

From there on it is just the same as having machines on your network. However things will be slower from the Quebec side.

You Avaya rep will let you know if the phone system would work, but there is not much more to it in terms of servers and desktops.

You more than like want server local in quebec for those people to work from.

If you would prefer to control everything more tightly from your office and dont want servers in the Quebec office, then look at using something like Citrix or Terminal services so the remote office is simply using remote desktops. This way you can centrally manage everything with ease and also wont have massive files going backwards and forwards across your VPN.

With AVAYA (IPO 500 as example that support up to 272 users, up to 4 T1 lines, 4 port BRI) you will be able to setup Site-to-site call forwarding no problem. Internally you need to make sure that your net-appliances are VoIP compatible and ports support VoIP trunking. The Net speed over the WAN is important to know, of course. Check your firewall throughput rates via VPN channels (over 50mbp/s should do fine over encrypted VPN).

if you are going to use terminal services, make sure to get the right licenses for the software. Some vendors don't support their software on TS. Also, it's great that you can remote into their ts session and see what is going on. However, you cannot remote to the client desktop without some other tool. Let them know it's cheaper, possible free with VNC, for remote connection both ways for support. Set the computers in the remote site with wake on lan so you can work on them too when no one is there. Are you in any of the office design decisions? Don't do it like here with elevator key cards, door key cards, locks everywhere, but the front door is full of glass with the hinges on the outside.

I'm with Darren on the local server idea - use DFS to replicate the necessary bits of your folder structure between the two sites and bung a cheapy Proliant into their office - ML115 G5s can be had for under £225 here, so I assume similar pricing is available there, just bung a bit more disk space in and you're laughing. Simplifies your backups, since you only need backup at your central office.

The first key will be line speeds, make sure you get quick enough lines both at your office and in Quebec

Next get yourself a decent vpn device/firewall. 1 for each site. Use this device to then create a permanent VPN tunnel between the 2 sites.

From there on it is just the same as having machines on your network. However things will be slower from the Quebec side.

Hi Darren we use Juniper Firewalls currently with MPLS (2 x T1) to access applications with our U.S. office using CITRIX.

SAMUEL wrote:

With AVAYA (IPO 500 as example that support up to 272 users, up to 4 T1 lines, 4 port BRI) you will be able to setup Site-to-site call forwarding no problem. Internally you need to make sure that your net-appliances are VoIP compatible and ports support VoIP trunking. The Net speed over the WAN is important to know, of course. Check your firewall throughput rates via VPN channels (over 50mbp/s should do fine over encrypted VPN).

Just to get you started, and thinking. :-)

Sam.F

We do have the IPO 500 and so its good to know that its capable the part about setting up a VPN is frightening, I haven’t had much experiencing setting one up. Unless maybe Juniper support can help me.

LittleBunnyFooFoo wrote:

. Are you in any of the office design decisions? Don't do it like here with elevator key cards, door key cards, locks everywhere, but the front door is full of glass with the hinges on the outside.

I dont think I will be included in office design decisions other than maybe a server room to put Patch Panels etc. I'll be using UltraVNC or maybe LogMeIn to do any remote support.

nichomach wrote:

I'm with Darren on the local server idea - use DFS to replicate the necessary bits of your folder structure between the two sites and bung a cheapy Proliant into their office - ML115 G5s can be had for under £225 here, so I assume similar pricing is available there, just bung a bit more disk space in and you're laughing. Simplifies your backups, since you only need backup at your central office.

What does DFS Stand for? Yeah, I cant see getting away with not having any kind of server in the Quebec side. Replicating data would probably work for some data. There is a NAS Solution by NetGear that can do site to site backups etc. and has built in Raid 0, 1, 5 but one unit with 1TB Storage is $1300.

I'm going to compile all the great info here and present to management and they can decide how much they want to spend. I want to make them aware what is involved.

Distributed File System - basically, it's file replication between servers, but smarter; instead of replicating a whole file each time a change is made, it replicates only the changes. Kind to your bandwidth :-).

With the VoIP, just make sure the proper CESID get's forwarded when someone needs to call emergency services. You don't have to know how to do it but I would definitely make sure your vendor is thinking about that. Most likely they will need to add DID's for the staff at the remote office and program the addresses for those DID's into the system and verify with the phone company that it's done correctly. In some systems the address is pulled from the circuit information, if you're using a T-1 for dial-tone. If it's all POTS lines on a switch at the remote office and configure the remote emergency calls to go out the local lines this won't be an issue. But definitely double check because there is a lot of potential for mistake here.

With the desktops, I'm used to a terminal server environment. If you're going to be able to do VoIP over the WAN link it will definitely do a few remote desktop sessions. But there are lots of good ideas for the desktop option in this discussion.

You don't say where in Canada you are, but in Atlantic Canada we have plants in Nfld, NB, NS, and PEI all connected via Bell Aliant using an MPLS network. Our VOIP is also with Bell Aliant and works perfectly between plants. Our lines between plants are 5MB and most of the remote users are using TS into our main plant here.

You don't say where in Canada you are, but in Atlantic Canada we have plants in Nfld, NB, NS, and PEI all connected via Bell Aliant using an MPLS network. Our VOIP is also with Bell Aliant and works perfectly between plants. Our lines between plants are 5MB and most of the remote users are using TS into our main plant here.

We are in Mississauga, Ontario.... I dont have an exact address for Quebec yet.

We have an MPLS connection between Mississauga, and Harrisburg (USA) using Juniper Firewall and VPN Tunnels. That portion was setup by a network engineer in our U.S. office. There is a bit of a friction between management, so I cant get assistance from our U.S. office to give me some guidance, thats probably a topic for another thread. :)

Although this is a small office with 5 people. I'm trying to think about the future and growth and as well I can see our company opening another office maybe in Calgery.

Its always cheaper to do something right the first time around rather than later.

Which is why I plan and ask questions and get feedback and second opinions. :)

I still make mistakes but fewer mistakes than if i didnt ask any questions. :)

I'm in Quebec, up in St-Jerome. About 30 minutes out of Montreal (weather permitting). If you need help pulling some cable or mundane tasks that can help you out, or dealing with configurations, I can give you a hand (after hours) or weekends if you need the help (off the books, but beer is always nice ;-) )

I'm in Quebec, up in St-Jerome. About 30 minutes out of Montreal (weather permitting). If you need help pulling some cable or mundane tasks that can help you out, or dealing with configurations, I can give you a hand (after hours) or weekends if you need the help (off the books, but beer is always nice ;-) )

hehehe... Thanks for the offer, If I need the help I'll for sure let you know.

Ok... so next month I will be going down to Quebec to help wire the infrastructure, being small office of five people. They dont want to hire a professional to do it.

Anyways...

What do you guys think of these two scenarios for getting everything up and running.

Scenario 1:

A 16 Port switch to get everything talking to each other.

Install their own Phone system

Setup a Direct MPLS to our U.S. office which has most of the systems they will need ot connect to, and that way they can join the domain as well.We only have File Server/e-mail where I'm located.

Scenario 2:

Similar to one but we we they directly connect to our office with MPLS for data and a connection for Phones so its like being at our office for extensions.

Scenario 2: is what I'm being asked to setup. But if something happens in our office here, Quebec office will be dead in the water as well.. but with Scenario 1, if something happens here, they still have thier phones, they can still use our ERP software etc.. e-mail would be the only thing affected.

What do you guys think?

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